Stage Door: Tony Predictions

We've already talked Tony Presenters & Performances so let's delve into predictions for the show this Sunday night on CBS.

Best Musical
Bright Star (REVIEWED) 
Hamilton
School of Rock
Shuffle Along
Waitress

Will Win: Hamilton in a cakewalk though Shuffle Along has ardent fans so it probably would have won in a year without a juggernaut like Hamilton. 

Best Play
Eclipsed by Danai Gurira -- closes June 19th
King Charles III by Mike Bartlett - already closed
The Father by Florian Zeller (REVIEWED) 
The Humans by Stephen Karam

Will Win: The Humans has been nabbing all the precursor prizes so it's got the momentum.
Possible Spoiler: ...if there's a surprise look to Eclipsed

more after the jump...

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From the Vaults: Meryl Streep in "A Prairie Home Companion"

Since today marks the 10th anniversary of the release of Robert Altman's swan song A Prairie Home Companion (2006), a gem excavated from that year's Oscar blogging for those who were not around in 2006. Though I know I've cooled on Meryl in the years since I wrote this (2006 was a major peak for Meryl but too many performances that didn't thrill followed and were automatically exalted and Oscar nominated anyway) I consider her past decade a valley rather than a downward trend. All performers have their peaks and valleys. I'm waiting for the next transcendent performance -- Impatiently, but I promise I'm hopeful.

It didn't take Meryl Streep long. By 1987 at the very latest, just ten years into her career, we knew that she could do everything. We'd already heard the accents, seen the funny, witnessed the sexy, fallen in love, had our hearts broken and heard the magnificent singing voice. If she were less endearing and emotionally attentive as a performer her technical range would be just hateful, a thing to curse as she popped up again and again in films. But this woman has it all. She is, put simply, the most consistent versatile actor in the movies.

So what is there left for Meryl Streep to do? It turns out quite a lot...

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Emmy FYC: Ten Nominees?

Emmy nomination voting begins Monday. For the next week or two we'll be sharing FYCs of some kind. Here's Daniel...

If you haven’t had a chance yet to read Debra Birnbaum’s shake-up Emmys proposal in Variety, I highly recommend you do. Her argument seems tailor made for feedback from passionate awards watchers (i.e. TFE readers) who have cultivated reams of opinions for how various awards bodies do business, nomination-wise, in an ever-changing marketplace of taste and broader appeal. Living in this age of television where high quality programs are on an infinity loop, she wonders whether the Emmys should consider expanding their Outstanding Drama and Comedy Series categories to ten nominees.

Sound familiar?

While there’s a certain integrity in maintaining a tradition of exclusive acclaim – after all, not every deserving piece of art can statistically make the cut – one wonders how a taboo-busting, conversation-elevating, and surprising comedy like the aptly named Broad City can so consistently take bong hits off the zeitgeist without seeing a few gold men women along the way. That aren’t hallucinations, mind you. Same goes for The Americans, which has been uniformly accepted by critics as one of the all-time greats and yet fails time and time again to nudge out a longstanding favorite like Downton Abbey. The Emmys notoriously pick their favorites and bitterly cling to them so could this be an inclusive measure to better reflect populist and critical tastes?

On the flipside, for every District 9 or A Serious Man, there’s a Blind Side amongst expanded groups. On the movie side, AMPAS has struggled to find clarity on this issue – abandoning the hard ten for a jostle between seven and nine. That's made some yearn for a time when five was fine. There's no guarantee that bigger sized envelopes equal 'pushing the envelope' in awards selections. After expanding their roster to seven nominees last year, perhaps the Emmys are better served to wait and see how their fresh shuffle deals in the long game. As Birnbaum touches upon, mainstays like Mad Men and Nurse Jackie have ended their runs and opened up space for new nominees. And, yet, the juggernaut that is Modern Family journeys on unchecked, save a Veep.

Should the Emmys take a page from the 2009-2010 Oscar playbook and expand their nominations in hopes of new players? Or will their fresh groceries go stale? How do you adjust an influx of quality with such limited quantity? 

Make America Link Again

• Vague Visages why critics often fail when writing about acting
• EW Forget to link up to the Meryl Streep as Donald Trump thing. Sadly no better video has emerged than this very shaky cel phone
• Playbill in the most exciting theater news imaginable The Lovely Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon will co-star in the revival of The Little Foxes. The best part? They'll be alternating roles periodically!
• TFE ...If you missed our Smackdown which featured The Little Foxes you should read it. It is a great play which made for an excitingly cutting movie with killer performance by Bette Davis and Patricia Collinge. Can't wait to see it on stage and see what Linney & Nixon do with those two very different roles.

• Slate the enduring influential portrait of genius and mediocrity in Amadeus 
• The Tarzan Files has images from Total Film's behind the scenes report on the Legend of Tarzan
• Variety Netflix releases some data on how quickly people binge watch but not enough. I mean, I wanna hear how often a viewer DOESN'T complete a show. There must be stats on that and is that how they decide what to cancel?
• Variety Geena Davis producing a documentary on Hollywood's gender inequality
• /Film JK Simmons is working out a lot to play Commissioner Gordon. Doesn't he know Gordon never gets any action beyond telephone calls and holding a gun?
• Village Voice on Brian de Palma and divisive auteurs eventually being labelled masters
• Comics Alliance James Wan talks about why he chose to direct Aquaman over Flash as both were offered to him
• Pajiba on the worst thing about Warcraft. Yup, we have another incredibly good looking actor (this time it's Daniel Wu) buried in makeup and latex until you can't recognize him.
• TFE ...If you missed the last podcast we talked about this problem with franchise pictures. Why do they keep hiring beautiful actors when they intend to cover up their beauty and make them unrecognizable?
• Antagony & Ecstasy a rare 10/10 review for The Lobster 

Off Screen
SBS a breakdown of victim blaming using pie charts 

Thoughts I had while looking at the first "20th Century Women" Image

Readers. I do not know where this image originated but I was so excited when I saw it I stopped breathing for a second. Thoughts that came to me while staring at it without editing them...

I already want to inject this movie directly into my veins. 

The Bening is front and center as it should be. Movies that put her off to the side. They're doing it wrong.

Sometimes it disturbs me when Elle Fanning looks directly into the camera. Like, quite possibly, she's not real. Or maybe an alien (I think she is playing one in How To Talk to Girls At Parties but that's just a clever way to throw us off the scent and hide in plain sight)

Remember when Billy Crudup turned down playing the Hulk in the early Aughts? Remember when Billy Crudup left Mary Louise Parker for Claire Danes when MLP was pregnant and everyone hated him? Remember when Billy Crudup was so great in various things throughout his career?

He looks kind of McConaughey Dallas Buyer's ragged in this image and that worries me. Unless it's for the character.

I didn't even recognize Greta Gerwig. WHOA. That's what a change of hair color and cut will do to a person.

When will this movie be in my eyeballs? WHEN? WHEN?!? I have the impatience.

Confrontational hippie boss realness.

I think the boy on the far right is this dude but I'm not sure. (Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating when I click over to IMDb while writing posts. LOL) The movie has something to do with The Bening's relationship to mothering her boy via her other relationships? 

Mike Mills last movie Beginners was so original and amazing and personal and resonant and all of the things movies should aspire to be and if this one is that good I will die of happiness while watching it only not all the way dead because it will also give me life and there will be more movies to see after it and I don't want to die.

Greta Gerwig looking like someone else is weird because even though she's Indie Queen, she's actually old fashioned movie star in that she always plays herself. Superbly.

Will it finally be Annette Bening's year at the Oscars? It wasn't in 1990. Or 1999. Or 2004. Or 2010. Who, me? Bitter? What's that woman got to do to win an Oscar?